In The News - 5/4/2024
The Spokesman Review
City’s camping restrictions keep unhoused people on the move
‘They’re acting like bullies at school’
John Parke, known as “Cowboy,” is always ready to pack up and move. He stacks his black and blue tent, foam sleeping pad, and flannel-lined sleeping bag on top of a wagon that he hauls away every day at 7 a.m. before police arrive and order him and the other unhoused people of “camp town” to leave.
Moving has become part of Parke’s morning routine. He had to move when officials in Clarkston, a small town in southeastern Washington on the Idaho border, closed the park where he was living in October. He moved days later when the city erected fences around another park where he was preparing his shelter for winter. And he moved again when the mayor declared 75 people at an encampment behind Walmart a “state of emergency.”
Now, the 45-year-old has to move every day so police won’t ticket him.
“They’re making it harder to get a job and improve our situation,” Parke said. “They’re acting like bullies at school, and I’m not going to let them do that, so I’m standing up for the homeless community.”
The city of about 7,000 recently restricted tents and other makeshift shelters used by unhoused people like Parke to one city park between the hours of 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. and prohibited personal belongings that are “not essential to living.” Parke is part of an ongoing lawsuit against Clarkston arguing the ordinance is unconstitutional.
Smaller Washington cities like Clarkston are increasingly confronting the housing crisis more commonly associated with densely populated, urban areas.That could be a preview of what’s to come, not just in Washington but nationwide, following a U.S. Supreme Court decision expected in June. Justices are considering whether to overturn lower-court rulings in Oregon and Idaho that protect homeless people from being ticketed, charged or arrested for sleeping on public property when there is no shelter available.
In the past year, at least five Washington cities and two counties responded to increased homeless populations with camping bans. In addition to Clarkston, the Northwest Justice Project, which provides free civil legal assistance to low-income people in Washington, recently sued two other cities, challenging the constitutionality of homeless restrictions.
Cities contend that these laws are necessary to control encampments, which are unsafe for inhabitants, the general public and the environment. In a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in, cities said they’re paralyzed by federal court rulings in Boise, Idaho, and Grants Pass, Oregon, that presume “temporary shelter beds are the solution to homelessness, channeling local resources away from longer-term solutions like permanent supportive housing, mental healthcare, drug rehabilitation, and low-income housing support.”
KXLY
As ‘empowered’ cities ban them from public spaces, homeless people in WA scatter in search of refuge
(Note: article is similar to one highlighted above - however, no paywall!)